After Years of Pushing Animal Rights, ERLC Head Now Ponders If Pets Go to Heaven
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) is a bastion of anti-conservative movements designed to infiltrate the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical denominations by changing the way people think about issues. The method involves slowly introducing slightly progressive ideology while putting a Bible-themed spin on it, disguising it as a "gospel issue." It has happened on multiple occasions through the ERLC through its many efforts ranging from racial reconciliation to LGBTQ inclusion. But what you may not have known is that the ERLC has also relentlessly pushed animal rights activism.
In 2018, the ERLC tested the waters of animal rights activism by posting a video by a radical animal rights activist named Charles Camosy. It wasn't long before the ERLC received so much backlash that it had no choice but to delete the video, and then make up some ridiculous excuse about how it was "accidentally posted." Camosy advocates for what he calls "ethical eating" and is a staunch opponent of animal husbandry -- and he was platformed by the ERLC to push his agenda.
Back the train up a bit, ERLC research fellow and Liberty University professor, Karen Swallow Prior, has been one of the leading voices at the ERLC on the "ethics" of eating animals. In fact, Swallow Prior has even advocated for the destruction of the economy in order to end factory farming -- her words, "We have to prick the conscience on factory farming, so we have to say the economy of the country be damned, this has to stop."
Thankfully, the vast majority of evangelicals and Southern Baptists have not bought into this movement. However, the ERLC is still trying their damndest to change the way we think about animals. If they can't turn all Southern Baptists into vegans, at least they can soften everyone's hearts toward animals -- that God gave us for food.
In 2015, this same Karen Swallow Prior suggested that animals might go to heaven through their relationships with humans. Of course, this is biblically absurd -- but putting that thought in people's heads may just be enough to, as Swallow Prior says, "prick the consciences" of those who eat animals.
How can we eat something we have to spend eternity with?
Now, Russell Moore, the head of the ERLC, is doing the same thing. While he doesn't outright make a judgment call on whether or not animals go to heaven, he lays out some good and bad reasons why some people might think they do. Let's just be honest, they're all bad reasons. They're all stupid reasons. Nonetheless, Moore's efforts at leaving that door open to weak-minded people and soft-hearted women is, likely, just enough to "prick their consciences."
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